


One More Thing

by Anangke



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: 00Q - Freeform, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Feels, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4888045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anangke/pseuds/Anangke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bond returns from a particularly disastrous mission, Q makes an unusual request of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Thing

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the second trailer and the request Bond makes of Q resonated with me. Like it was an established dialogue - each requesting one more thing of the other. I couldn't get it out of my head until I wrote it down. Enjoy!

Bond leaned against the elevator wall and allowed himself to close his eyes.

Medical had only just released him. The painful bruising around his neck where the target had tried to choke him to death apparently was as bad as it looked. The doctor examining him was even more tight-lipped than normal when Bond responded he was fine to every probe, be it physical or verbal.

Bond hadn’t rushed through the examination though since Q was still being debriefed.  The Quartermaster preferred it when he was cooperative upon his return. He was agreeable as possible with the entire medical team to please Q. Being agreeable didn’t equal forthcoming in Bond’s playbook however. He specifically omitted injury details he knew could ground him from the next mission.

MI-6 had won this one but it was messy. None of their informants had reached the extraction point. Bond still wasn't sure if 005 had made it out of the country and no one in medical dared talking more than necessary to him. Informing him of another agent's status, alive or otherwise, was out of the question.

Bond leaned his head back against the wall, wincing at the stretch on his beaten skin, and waited for the doors to close. When Q emerged from his meetings he would provide the update on the mission's final outcome.  There was nothing Bond could do for it either and way. He had already decided to wait in Q's office for him to finish, knowing it would be quiet and allow him to catch a nap on the couch before the next mission briefing started.

While twelve hours was a quick turnaround, it wasn't unusual. 

The elevator doors jerked and Bond’s eyes opened in time to see a slender hand shoot in to keep them from closing at the last possible second. Q slid his lean form inside.

Although he looked as worn as Bond felt his sharp eyes were alert, scanning his agent. His gaze landed on Bond's neck. He frowned as he studied the thick welt left from the rope, his slender hands already reaching up to examine the injury as he closed the distance between them.

"James," he said, shaking his head as he gently unbuttoned the second button on Bond's shirt. The first button was long destroyed somewhere on the roof of the munitions plant they were ambushed on. Q pulled back the bloodstained collar of the ruined shirt to examine the damage, eyes moving past his neck to the knife wounds across his torso.

"You should've seen the other guy," Bond replied, trying to casually deflect the concern as he watched the Quartermaster's eyes darken with concern behind the thick lenses of his glasses. His gaze lifted above Bond’s body to observe the heavy bruise covering most of the right side of his face.

"I did see the other guy," Q murmured as he explored the tender skin of Bond’s neck with gentle fingers. Bond was surprised to hear the soft tone of the words, laced with real concern, instead of the sharp banter he was used to engaging in with Q. "This outcome is unacceptable."

"Yes," Bond readily agreed. The mission hadn't resolved in their favor. "At least I was able to bring back all your equipment intact plus the tech the target was carrying."

"Apparently not the equipment I'm most concerned about."

Bond frowned. "I gave it to R when I landed before I went to medical and she -"

"007 don't be dense," Q said sharply, pressing his index finger against the jagged knife wound in Bond’s left shoulder that was only just recently stitched.

"Of course Quartermaster," Bond replied with a small smile. Their banter was familiar while the intensity of Q’s concern, together with own unresolved feelings over it, unnerved him.

He leaned forward, intending to pull the younger man closer. Q, however, stepped back out of his reach as he slid his hand into the pocket of his suit pants. Bond allowed himself a small congratulatory smile. Q was wearing the navy suit Bond had made for him. He watched the Quartermaster withdraw a capped ballpoint pen and hold it gingerly between the fingers of both hands.

"Finally," Bond commented dryly as he judged the thicker than average width. It could easily hold a small but deadly amount of explosive.

"You're not getting tech like that from me, ever Bond," Q replied but his retort was distracted. He twisted the cap of the pen counter-clockwise in two full rotations and the elevator carriage slid to a stop.

Q depressed the pen cap next. Instinctively, Bond looked up at the camera mounted alongside the elevator’s key switch controls and watched as the lights on the panel dimmed. As the carriage was bathed in red-tinged emergency lights, he could only imagine the electrical failure included the cameras circuitry.  

Q lifted eyes to find Bond's then, his face serious as he said, "Do one more thing for me."

"What do you have in mind?"

Q hesitated.

"Why Quartermaster you only had to ask," Bond grinned, reaching out in the semi-darkness to grab Q's slender hips and pulled him close.

Q easily went to him but his movements were cautious, he held himself back, as he again studied Bond's wounds.

“There just scratches Q,” Bond teased. "I've had worse from that tiger you call a cat."

Q smiled slightly at that.  "She is a wild one."

He allowed Bond to tip his chin up slightly, pressing their lips together.  Bond closed his eyes against the unnatural light as Q wrapped his arms around Bond's broad shoulders.  He pressed tightly against the agent’s body as he deepened the kiss. Bond slid his left hand down Q’s back pulling him even closer as the right tangled in the unruly mess of hair. 

Bond was pulling at Q's shirt, tucked too tightly into the suit pants, when Q abruptly broke away from him. 

“James,” he whispered, inches from the agent’s lips.

He moved to cradle Bond’s head in gentle hands as he softly kissed the agent’s strong jaw. He then continued to press light, sweet kisses up across the tender flesh of his bruised cheekbone until he could press his lips to James' ear. The agent shivered and held him tighter, delighting in the combined sensation of the pleasure he took in Q’s warm breath caressing him and the comfort he found in listening to Q breathe against him.

“Don't go,” Q whispered after a moment.

Bond froze against him.

“Don't go,” he repeated. Again the words were barely a whisper as he pulled back to look at Bond’s face.

“Of course I'm going.” Bond frowned at the request.  It alarmed him because Q had never asked for anything like this before from him. It was simply something they never asked of each other. It was, and had been, an unspoken rule between them since the beginning.

Q watched in the low light as deep lines formed across his agent's forehead. He reached out to trace one with his index finger, the same finger that had pressed on the bruise minutes before.  Bond could read the sadness in his expression, but also the determination.

“I'm asking you not to.”

“You've never asked that of me before,” Bond said, pulling away from Q’s embrace. He stepped out of the Quartermaster’s reach to the far side of the elevator. They both knew Q could cross the distance easily but it was the gesture that counted for them both.

“I know.”

Bond felt the familiar pull of anxiety that always resulted from circumstances he couldn't control beginning in his gut. Circumstances that required emotion, not action. This was not what he did. He was an agent of the Queen, of MI-6, his sole purpose was to go out into the field on the missions assigned.  Damn the consequences. He would have to appeal to Q’s logic.

“My not going won't stop it. The mission will still go forward.”

“You are completely correct. I have almost no hope of stopping it now since my point of view had so little impact during the course of the meetings over the last few hours. If I can't find a way to gain traction-" he stopped short and Bond watched him deflect the impact of his words with a shrug. "Well, there's not much hope for it."

“They will send someone else.”

Q nodded in agreement, his thick hair falling over his glasses, making him look so young. “Yes.”

Bond chose his next words carefully. He had said _they_ but there was no _they_ here. It was Q. Q would bear this. It would be his decision. He would choose the agent to replace Bond in the field.

“ _You_ will send someone else Quartermaster.”

The words were cold, harsh, meant to end any false sentiment that Q, his Q, was feeling.  Bond found himself unable to cross the distance between them, to soften the blow from his words and his tone and his distance. They stood there together but not together in the silent, immobilized elevator. Bond felt the silence weigh down on them.  He felt the grief his words caused him.  It was paralyzing, it threatened to engulf them both, but then it didn't.

“Yes, James. I will.”

James. Not Bond. Not 007. James.

The silence, the separation, didn’t engulf them as he expected it to because Q didn't let it.  He never would because Q knew, even if Bond could only begin to understand, that buried deep below the grief and the requirements and the carnage of their occupations, there was something else. Something Bond didn't dare yet identify.

Instead, Bond straightened.  He did what he excelled at, action.  He stepped away from the wall, within reach of Q, and squared his shoulders.

“You said there was one more thing you needed me to do for you,” Bond repeated his words.

“Yes.”

“What do you need?” Bond asked.

“I need for you not to go on this mission,” Q said quietly.  

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

“If that's what you need, Q,” Bond said, taking the final step so he could wrap his arms around Q and pull him tight against him.

“Yes. That's what I need James.” Q said the words but they were muffled against the collar of Bond's bloody shirt.

“Then consider it done.”

 


End file.
